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Guardian hacks hacked

The anti-Bush campaign startedby UK newspaper, the Guardian,was forced to close down after itswebsite was attacked by hackers. The website, which linked liberalGuardian readers with undecidedvoters in Clark County, Ohio,brought down, while staff at thenewspaper were deluged withpro-conservative spam.

Database breach at Universityof California-Berkeley

The personal information of 1.4million Californians is at riskafter a hacker infiltrated a data-base at the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley. The information, which includedhome addresses, social securitynumbers and other personalinformation was accessed duringAugust, although it took sometime before the University discov-ered the breach. It is stillunknown if the hacker down-loaded the database.

12 phishers hooked in Hong-Kong

A dozen people have been arrest-ed for a phishing scam in HongKong, using the name of theHSBC Bank. Some 12 people are believed tohave fallen for the scheme, whichnetted the phishers HK$600,000.

One hacked off referee

After suffering over 16,000 hateemails after some disputed deci-sion making against the Englandteam in Euro 2004, Swiss refereeUrs Meier probably thought thatthe worst was over. But his web-site was hacked into recently anda fake apology, purporting to befrom himself appeared.The apology, which claimed thatthe referee had taken a bribefrom a FIFA official in order tolet Portugal stay in the tourna-ment, was removed almost imme-diately.

Purdue University under pressure

An unknown hacker has gainedaccess to Purdue University’scomputer network, causing theuniversity to request all users tochange their passwords. As yet it is unknown whether anypersonal information was taken.Computers at the various cam-puses were all illegally accessed.

Four for phishing offence

Four Eastern Europeans werecharged with conspiracy todefraud financial institutions at aLondon court on 14 October.Thought to be part of a gangwhich is responsible for defraud-ing customers of thousands ofpounds through phishing, this iswidely thought to be the firsttime this specific charge has beenmade in court.

US Secret Service crack ID theftgang

The US Secret Service arrested 28suspected online identity thievesin October. The gang are thoughtto have trafficked 1.7 millioncredit card numbers. Financialinstitutions estimate that the loss-es associated with the gang makeup $4.3 million. The investiga-tion, known as Operation Firewallstarted in July 2003 and hasuncovered the Shadowcrew,Carderplanet and Darkprofitscriminal gangs. “This indictmentstrikes at the heart of an organiza-tion that is alleged to have servedas a one-stop marketplace foridentity theft,” said AttorneyGeneral, John Ashcroft.

Bagle bounces back

A new version of the Bagle emailvirus, which tries to disable theWindows XP Service Pack 2 fire-wall has been spreading. Morethan two million copies of BagleAT have been intercepted byemail filtering company,MessageLabs.

I n B r i e f

news

Privacy advocate warns biometric industryto stay clear of governmentBrian McKenna

Civil libertarian academic Simon Davies offered to meet thebiometrics industry half way at last week's Biometrics 2004conference. But the Privacy International leader and LondonSchool of Economics professor warned the industry not to putits technology into the hands of governments.

UK Police smash eBay firearms trade

The West Midlands (UK) Police Force unearthed the bulk tradeof firearms on eBay, leading to the exposure of internationalgun suppliers. As a result the investigation conducted by theForce's High Tech Crime Unit won the 2004 International LawEnforcement Cybercrime Project award in October.

Assistant Chief Constable(Crime) Stuart Hyde said:"This is a major achievementand demonstrates how localforces, working with industry,can use hi-tech investigationskills to impact on localcrime."

The winning unit raided aback street shop, which wasset up to supply ammunition

for the guns. Supplier nameswere discovered through ana-lyzing computers seized fromthe shop, which also con-tained an Iraqi made rocketlauncher.

The techniques used by"Operation Marlite" will nowbe pushed out throughoutUK forces to combat illegalfirearms trade on the Internet.

"We promise not to opposebiometrics in principle", hesaid, "and we will enthusiasti-cally support privacy-enhanc-ing, limited applications. Butwe will not meet you in thearea of wide-scale systems. Wewill not go where DavidBlunkett [the UK's HomeSecretary] wants us to go: thatis, a national database of irisscans. No way".

"Imagine what governmentscould do with a perfect identi-fication system. It would be afatal blow to individual free-dom.

Davies rounded on a hecklerin the audience who challengedhim to say "where is the harm [in governments' collect-ing biometric identity data]?"He stressed the fallibility of the technology, and the

consequent risk that it couldexclude people from society.

"I am what the industry callsa goat", he declared, referringto a medical condition thatprevents his iris remaining stat-ic enough to be scanned."What will you do with peoplelike me?"

Davies underlined what hecalls 'function creep' whereby'common good' legislation,like the UK National Databaseor the European ArrestWarrant, comes to be moresevere than originally mooted.The same thing will happenwith biometrics, he warned.

"The silent majority [whoapprove identity cards in theUK] won't save you", hewarned the audience. "Peopleare prepared to go to prisonover this."